Poetry. In WHAT BLOOMS IN WINTER, Maria Mazziotti Gillan finds cause to celebrate the clarity and comfort of people and times past. This book is a praise song for all that is human and that survives despite grief and loss. It is one woman's story of an immigrant girl growing up in the 1950s in Paterson, NJ, and seeing over a distance of so many years all that she was given to carry into her life as a womanwife, mother, daughter, grandmother, widow, and arts and eco-activist. All these experiences and people have formed her into the indomitable woman she is. Laced with humor and optimism, this book leads us to believe that flowers that bloom in winter out of hard ground have their own audacious beauty.

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Descripción del producto

Poetry. In WHAT BLOOMS IN WINTER, Maria Mazziotti Gillan finds cause to celebrate the clarity and comfort of people and times past. This book is a praise song for all that is human and that survives despite grief and loss. It is one woman's story of an immigrant girl growing up in the 1950s in Paterson, NJ, and seeing over a distance of so many years all that she was given to carry into her life as a womanwife, mother, daughter, grandmother, widow, and arts and eco-activist. All these experiences and people have formed her into the indomitable woman she is. Laced with humor and optimism, this book leads us to believe that flowers that bloom in winter out of hard ground have their own audacious beauty.

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Charles W. Brice

5.0 de 5 estrellasPoetic Blossoms

3 de noviembre de 2016 - Publicado en Amazon.com

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan can write poems that will hush a room, that can cause every person there to feel devastating shame, glorious happiness, or abject grief. Her new book is filled with so many magnificent poems that I didn't want it to end. I stretched out my reading over a week just so I wouldn't have to come to the last poem. Once there, I turned back to the first page and began again. Here's an example of why:

Italian Summer

This summer in Italy, you helped me up steps,let me hold your arm as we walkedthe cobblestone streets of Italian hill towns.I wanted to give you a gift of the Italy I love, grandson.How easy it is to believe what we want to believeabout the way people see us,what they feel.

For years, I held onto the image of youat seven years old in your North Carolina house.You walked past me in your family room,backed up, looked at me with huge violet eyes.“I love you, Grandma,” you said.

Or the way you always grabbed your pillowand overnight bag because you wanted to staywith me at the hotel when I visited you,so much sweetness always coming off you,such an open, loving heart.

Now you’re 19 and we are in Italy together. We havebeen here almost three weeks. I am happyto walk with you, to watch you try new food.At my favorite restaurant in Rome, we have dinner togetherand you drink your glass of champagne and mine.Suddenly, you turn to me and tell me everythingyour mother and father say about me, all the thingsthat are wrong about me—too busy, too loud,too enthusiastic—all the things I should have done,and in the restaurant, where I will never be able to go again,I start to cry.

We leave the restaurant and you take my arm.But my throat clamps closed. I can’t speak.How foolish I feel for believing you loved meas I have always loved you.

Now, each night, I pray for you to do wellin your classes, to be happy, to make friends.I love you no less,though whenever I think of you I am sadfor this loss, a cave that opens inside metoo deep and dark ever to fill.

I am always eager for Gillan's new poems. The skill of an accomplished poet is combined with the tenderness of a woman who lives deeply and sensuously as a wife, daughter, mother, grandmother, widow, and of course as a poet. Her poems are accessible, orginal, and deeply moving. I am already waiting for the next book.